Here, i share some super-simple and tasty recipes, that a beginner like me can easily prepare. Happy cooking!

Category: Rice & Pasta Recipes

Being raised in Saudi Arabia, I’ve literally grown up eating delish-Arabic food. Shawarma and Kabsa being my all time favorites.

Kabsa (Arabic: كبسة‎‎ kabsah) is a family of mixed rice dishes that originates from Saudi Arabia, where it is commonly regarded as a national dish. Though kabsa is believed to be indigenous to Saudi Arabia, it is often served in countries such as Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Iraq and Kuwait. The dish is also popularly known as makbūs (Arabic: مكبوس‎‎) in most Arab states of the Persian Gulf, but is served in the same way.

Step 1: Wash 2 cups of rice and soak in water for about 30 mins to 1 hour.

Step 2: Add whole spices to hot oil in a pressure cooker and once aromatic, add in the chopped onions and saute until translucent.

Step 3: Toss in the tomatoes, ginger-garlic paste and green chili and let it cook for about 5-7 minutes. Add salt as per taste.

Step 4: Now add the chicken along with turmeric, chilli and garam masala (which is an added variant) and keep covered for about 5 minutes.

Step 5: Drain the rice and add to the cooker along with 1.5 cups of water and a sliced dry lemon. Close the cooker and cook on medium flame until first whistle. Keep covered till the pressure is released.

Enjoy with laban (buttermilk) and shattah (hot sauce) as they call it.

Appam or Palappam is my favorite South-Indian breakfast. Appam is a type of pancake made with fermented rice batter and milk. Some people like to have it with just sugar. I like to have it with stew or egg curry. You can even eat it just by itself. Doesn’t matter because it is that good.

Mom was making appam the other day and I just asked her the recipe out of curiosity. I never thought making appam was so easy.

Step 2: Wash, rinse and strain the rice. Add this rice to a blender. Pour milk up to the level of rice in your blender. Blend along with yeast and 1 tsp of sugar. Adjust the thickness with more milk if required.

Let the batter rest overnight. This allows it time to ferment. Now, adjust the salt and sugar. Add salt according to taste. Add about 3-5 tbsp of sugar, again, according to taste.

Step 3: Heat a curved non-stick pan. Pour about half a cup of batter to make each appam.

Step 4: Hold the handles and spin the batter around the pan. Cover and cook until done.

Note: If you don’t have the kind of pan to make pal-appam, you can make it make on a regular pan, and it would like this.

Step 2: In a non-stick pan, heat some oil and add the tomato paste, garlic paste, chilli powder and sausages to it. Cook for about 5 minutes or until done.

Step 3: In a pan, heat the butter and add the flour to it until well incorporated. Now add in the milk and whisk until its starts to thicken. Turn off the flame and let it cool while it continues to thicken. Add salt, pepper, and a handful of your favorite kind of cheese. Mix well.(Here’s the link to Laura Vitale’s Bechamel Sauce recipe. I’ve followed the same technique, but used only the ingredients mentioned above.)

I like to start with minced meat as I feel it serves as a decent base. I also like to end with minced meat and top with the bechamel sauce. This way, once baked, its like a thick layer of bechamel and you can see the meat through the cheese. Makes it look all the more tempting. You could also sprinkle some chopped spinach/parsley leaves on top. I’ve used spinach as I like the flavor it imparts.

It wouldn’t take much time to set as all the ingredients are already cooked. Bake for a total of 20 minutes or until done.

My husband is the kind that feels weirdly uncomfortable if he hasn’t eaten anything from out. So I make it a point to “try” and make our home-cooked meals as healthy as possible. On a regular basis, all I do is limit the amount of oil. But today, I made fried-rice, using brown rice. I added beets to make it look red and tempting.

Weekend Special! Every Saturday in Saudi (which is like Sunday elsewhere) Mom makes it a point to come up with something special. Today she decided to make some “Bombay Mutton Biryani”, and luckily, I got to watch while chopping up the onions and stuff.

Her key ingredient is this Bombay Biryani Masala by Mehran.You could follow the exact instructions on the back of this packet, or follow my Mom’s instructions.

Step 1: In a pressure cooker, add the chopped mutton with 1 cup water and salt to taste. Cook for about half an hour on medium flame. Remove the mutton pieces. You could make Mutton Broth-Soup using the broth.

Step 2: In a non-stick vessel, add the oil and ghee mixture, and saute the onions until golden brown. Once done, remove the onions and stir-fry the cashews and raisins. Remove from oil and keep aside.

Step 3: Into this same vessel, add in the crushed ginger-garlic and saute until fragrant. Add the chopped tomatoes afterward. Cook until done.